Saturday, 30 August 2014

#IceBucketChallenge

We are not the first by a long shot to write about this
current craze but we have both been nominated a couple of times (after being convinced we'd dodged it....) and Saturday finally provided the opportunity to complete it. Within 24 hours of 2
people nominating us……

As with anything once you are slightly behind the masses you
are more likely to get other sharing opinions than those leading the way and so we decided to
read up and find out as much as we could before deciding if we were following
the masses and donating to ALS or if we were picking another charity.

One of the considerations was the negative press that was always going to follow a charity
getting wide exposure, newspapers couldn't wait to share the fact that the ALS CEO takes home a 6 figure
salary and that only 40% of funds raise are actually spent on those who the
charity supports.

Then there is the fact that the act is wasting water,
although in this country our recent downpours have provided enough water that the plants won’t miss it – we of course only used two small buckets worth!

After discussion, we decided to donate to the UK version of
ALS, MND or Motor Neurone Disease. The decision was easy because one of our
ex-colleagues lost his Mum to the awful disease earlier this year. Here is the
way we donated: https://www.justgiving.com/mndassoc/
or you can text ICED55 followed by an
amount (such as £5) to 70070.

From the charity:

In the UK we use MND – motor neurone disease – and in the USA they use ALS – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Both refer to a fatal, progressive disease that can rob people of the ability to speak, move and breathe. There is no cure.The reason there is a difference is that there are several forms of MND. ALS is the most common type.

The MND website is here: http://www.mndassociation.org/, we checked out as much as we could and like the fact that at least 78% of money raised is used to fund research or provide support to sufferers, their carers and their families. There aim is simple: Create a world without MND. Last year they raised £13.3 million so lets hope this campaign improves on that figure!

It is a shame to see that the press is now more interested
in finding negatives with what started as a way of raising awareness, not only
for ALS but for a lot of other charities. While we agree that charity should be
something you support all year round, without the need for something as silly as throwing ice over your head, that is an idealistic view, and simply not the case for most people. Like it or not, the ridiculous act of filming yourself getting drenched and cold has introduced the disease and its victims to millions of people around the world, who didn't know what ALS/MND was until this month. For those who are currently and will be struggling with MND, a disease that has not received much financial support before this, the IceBucketChallenge is priceless. The MND charity have received over £4.5 million in donations because of this one campaign so far!